Detox Smeetox

 

                                     photo: C. Ian Campbell 

Addressing the myth of the detox/cleanse diet trend is something I've been wanting to do since I started this blog. They don't make any sense to me. How could a week of deprivation, will-power lemon-water and vitamins suddenly render your body "clean." Maybe if you eat a diet of highly processed food and drink and/or smoke I can see how that might compromise your body's natural cleansing systems.  Maybe detox diets are for these people whose bodies are most likely not working at their maximum performance. Even then, a cleanse would only be temporary surely, and long-term relief from toxin build-up could only occur by cessation of smoking, reduction in drinking and improvements in diet.  

Over at Choosing Raw this week Gena brings up this very topic on her extensive post about women's health. 

"There is no reason for a healthy, average woman to drastically lower her caloric consumption with 'cleanses'. In fact, there’s a good chance that whatever cleanse you’re interested in–juices, lemonade, all raw veggies, smoothies only, and the list goes on–will only leave you feeling deprived, strip you of water weight, and lower your metabolism."

 The Guardian's (British newspaper) glorious Ben Goldacre addressed the issue in this 2005 article The Detox Myth. 

"There's certainly no evidence I'm aware of that eating a slightly unusual diet for a few days and munching on some vitamins speeds up the degradation and expulsion of any of the things these products claim to help you get rid of. And it's not really possible to imagine what experiment you could do to measure whether they were having an effect on real people, although if you came up with one, I'd be happy to try to do it."

(For more of Goldacre's fabulous wit see his debunking blog Bad Science.)

Another Guardian article in January 2009 found here offers a similar story.

The bad news for the ever-expanding detox/cleanse industry continues on WebMD:

"But the science behind the detox theory is deeply flawed, says Peter Pressman, MD, an internal medicine specialist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The body already has multiple systems in place -- including the liver, kidneys, and gastrointestinal tract -- that do a perfectly good job of eliminating toxins from the body within hours of consumption. "There's no evidence at all that any of these approaches augment the body's own mechanisms," Pressman tells WebMD. 
Detox dieters may report a variety of benefits, Pressman notes, but none can be traced to the idea of detoxification. Fewer headaches can be traced to other lifestyle changes such as reduction in alcohol and caffeine intake. Clearer skin can result from improved hydration, and less bloating could be a result of eating less food.
Some detox dieters report a boost in energy and even a sense of euphoria. Pressman says the feeling -- also commonly reported by people who are fasting -- is actually a reaction to starvation. It likely evolved as a way to help a person evade threats and locate food, he says."

So why are so many alternative health enthusiasts so convinced by the junk science that is the detox? Maybe it's just that those of us who try to live healthily are just as susceptible to aggressive marketing campaigns as the rest of the population. Maybe the idea behind it just sounds so good. It's a quick fix, albeit a torturous one. It's easy to market because it's easier to sell than a "eat healthily all your life" product. That's just it. A healthy lifestyle isn't a product. There's no money to be made in the unpackaged produce aisles. (According to Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle small farms that produce a variety of crops earn much more per acre than large single-crop farms. But I'm sure we're not talking about profits as large as the multimillion dollar diet industry here.)  
I think if you're eating a well-balanced diet of minimally processed foods and getting enough water, exercise and sleep then there's no real need for a cleanse. Even so, if one of these areas is lacking a quick-fix cleanse is not a permanent solution or a free pass to go wild the rest of the year. A better approach is to work toward an attainable, sustainable balanced life.